A Pillow To Dream On

I skipped the graduation ceremony at the University of Oregon in June of 1954 but that didn't invalidate my Bachelor's degree in History that landed me a job as an executive trainee with the Bon Marche department store that was opening in Eugene, Oregon.  I would be the assistant to Ralph Robinson, Divisional Manager for domestics (bedding, towels, yardage, notions) and women's lingerie. My pay was not quite as much as that paid most school custodians and in all the years I worked there no one ever asked me to explain the American cultural influences generated by post-Civil War policies of the federal government.  So much for my B.S. in History.

But I learned to fold towels to make attractive displays and how to make buying plans for trips to resource markets. And as an executive trainee I could work off-the-clock hours without overtime pay.  Not to mention learning the techniques for circumventing certain policy rules that were not beneficial to Divisional Manager Robinson's bonus objectives.  Like the price tags on merchandise that carried a date indicating how long a particular item had been in the store. Ralph's bonus was penalized for old merchandise so his assistant could work after hours in the warehouse making new tickets to put on old merchandise.

And then there was the pillow crisis.  One day the State of Oregon pillow inspector (What? You didn't know Oregon had pillow inspectors?) came through and took one of our pillows to be inspected by a lab. A week or two later the report came back and it wasn't good.  Among a number of unfortunate contents in our pillow, some of the feathers contained traces of urine.  Apparently the New York pillow resource we used purchased feathers from Europe where citizens would sell the feathers from their own bedding to the feather buyers who would then use those feathers in their pillows.  So we took our pillows off the sales floor, which had a serious negative impact on Robinson's bonus.  He got on the phone to New York and told the feather merchants to send him the best pillow ever made that would pass an inspection.  The new pillow came to us by air and on the inspector's return he got it for the lab which gave it a glowing report.  Our pillows came back onto the sales floor.

Best of all, Ralph gave me the test pillow and I enjoyed years of peaceful sleep on America's finest goose down urine-free pillow.